September 21, 2009

Cuckoos Eggs

According to the rating system of Chessmetrics.com, for a brief period in the early 1970s, Bobby Fischer was the greatest chess player of the last 170 year.

Peter Nicholas in the LA Times has a long article, Chasing the king of chess, documenting his theory that Bobby's true father wasn't German gentile biophysicist Gerhardt Fischer, whom his mother Regina Wender, a Jewish-American, had married in Moscow in 1933. Instead, Nicholas argues that the biological father was Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish physicist. Nicholas has pictures of the two men, Gerhardt Fischer and Paul Semenyi, for you to compare to the chess legend's looks. I guess I'd lean toward his theory, but neither man looks implausible for the role of Fischer's father.

That reminds me of John D. Gartner's theory in In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography that the former President wasn't actually the posthumous son of the bigamous marriage of his mother Virginia (the first of her five marriages) to traveling salesman Bill Blythe (the last of his five marriages). Bill Blythe, a high school dropout, was in the Army in Italy nine months before Bill Clinton was born. In 1993, when the Washington Post revealed that the President had an unknown half-brother in California, Clinton shrugged it off.

Gartner feels that having one charming tramp for a parent, his mother is enough to account for the ex-President's charming trampiness, while having another charming tramp, his putative father, as a parent is genetic overkill and leaves open the question where Clinton got his more serious genes.

Gartner theorizes that a doctor in Hope (where Virginia was a nurse) named George Wright was the real father. Later, Dr. Wright had young Bill Clinton vacation with his family every summer at a lakeside house. Apparently, lots of people in Hope believe Clinton was Dr. Wright's natural son.

Wright was a dirt-poor farmboy who graduated from high school at 16, worked in his brother's cotton-field for four years to save up money for college, graduated in 2.5 years, and then graduated from LSU medical school, where a classmate recalled him as "the poorest person I met im medical school." He was a bright workaholic and a voracious reader of medical literature. Of Wright's three legitimate sons, one is a doctor, another a lawyer, and a third is a car salesman.

It sounds plausible that Clinton is the product of his mother and the bright, hard-working doctor. But, of course, that's not proof. One of the doctor's sons is willing to provide a DNA sample if the ex-President is ever willing.

This reminds me that the bane of the uneasy reign of King Henry VII, the Lancastrian founder of the Tudor dynasty, were the impostors, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be the rightful heirs to the late King Edward IV, whose daughter Elizabeth of York Henry had married to end the War of the Roses after killing her uncle, Richard III at Bosworth Field. The impostors were handsome youths whom Yorkist malcontents seized upon to lead sizable military uprisings. Warbeck, who looked much like the famously handsome King Edward IV, might possibly have been an illegitimate offspring of that lusty monarch.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

49 comments:

Anonymous said...

Alexander Grothendieck had something similar in his background, and almost came to be known as Alexander Raddatz.

As it was, he ended up with his mother's maiden name.

[His biological parents were seriously hard-core kooks, btw.]

headache said...

All of this boils down to the assertion that you need to be some kinda bastard to make the bigtime.

Sideways said...

One of the doctor's sons is willing to provide a DNA sample if the ex-President is ever willing.

I wonder how many people would find the attraction (?) of having Bill Clinton being their half-brother worth shouting to the world that your father was siring bastards, presumably while married to their mother.

Jun said...

Bobby (in the 1962 pic) has exactly the same ears as Nemenyi (1930s photo) and the eyes, eyebrows, and nose are awfully close. I'd bet on Nemenyi being his father.

Dutch Boy said...

You didn't have to be a phoney to run afoul of Henry VII. He and his son the VIII relentlessly killed anyone who had a plausible claim to the throne (the Tudors claim being very weak). The VIII even had 67 year-old Margaret Pole (nee' Plantagenet) executed for treason.

William1066 said...

I failed to find any pictures of George Wright, but as Bubba seems to closely resemble his mama, it's not that important.

And the Bobby Fischer nose didn't come from either Mr. or Mrs. Fischer. (Hey, those two could pass for brother and sister).

Now maybe someone can explain to me how Obama Jr. inherited none of Obama Sr.'s features?

kudzu bob said...

I've always wondered if Gore Vidal is right to think that Martin Van Buren was Aaron Burr's illegitimate son.

Anonymous said...

"One of the doctor's sons is willing to provide a DNA sample if the ex-President is ever willing."

It would be out of character for Clinton to ever refuse to provide his DNA.

sj071 said...

'Bobby's life story, like his behavior, was bizarre and complicated. At the height of his powers, he abandoned the game and went into seclusion, surfacing periodically to spout paranoid, anti-Semitic screeds and to denounce the United States.'
Lol! Self-hating genius.
Steve...

And, yes, he was the greatest.

Anonymous said...

At this point it doesn't really matter. I think it's possible for someone to have shiftless parents and make something of their lives.

There's an interesting book about the identity of Perkin Warbeck that came out a few years ago. The aunt of the lost princes was an enthusiastic supporter and had served as a patron of an unidentified little boy of about the right age some years prior to Warbeck's appearance. There are also discrepancies between the confession that Henry VII's agents tortured out of Perkin and the names and family data of Perkin's supposed family and the city where he was from. I think it's quite plausible that he was one of Edward's byblows.

Anonymous said...

I doubt Gerhardt Fischer is 100% gentile. His eyes seems too closely set and his politics too far to the left. It would be interesting to know what disease causing genes (Harpending, Cochran thesis) Bobby Fischer carried.

TGGP said...

Although Warren Harding pardoned Eugene Debs for having spoken out against WW1, his administration did persecute one man who claimed Harding had black ancestry.

Anonymous said...

There was a family of seven children that lived near me when I was growing up. Five of the children were blond haired with blue eyes and pale skin, just like Mom and Dad. But the two youngest children had dark hair and eyes and fairly swarthy skin. There was a good reason for this: both were fathered by a Puerto Rican man with whom Mom had had a fairly lengthy affair. Odd enough, but the really strange thing is that Dad was fully aware of their paternity - it would be impossible for him to have thought he was the biological father - and had no problem at all with it. He was listed as the father on their birth certificates and treated the two children as his own, no differently than the other five.

Peter

Sid said...

Richard Wagner was probably the illegitimate son of Ludwig Geyer, an actor from a long line of Lutheran musicians. That makes more sense that Wagner's own putative father, a sheriff. It explains Wagner's relentless, adulterous amorousness, his talents as an actor, and obviously his extreme dramaturgical and musical skills.

Anonymous said...

Was a decent article, but it is really recycled from the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2002

"http://www.anusha.com/itsout.htm

Anonymous

P Coderch said...

Bobby Fischer was an extremely interesting character. If you have ever listened to his rants on Philipine radio, you know what I'm talking about. Fischer was interesting because his personality was so simple and yet he had such a monstrous intellect. He could look at 30 different chess boards and announce checkmate in all of them with 20 moves ahead, or look at a complex differential equation and solve it in seconds without the need for writing it down. Yet, when you analyse the things he said about geopolitics, history, etc, he struck one as almost dull. Not only that, he struck one as an immature person filled of prejudices and oversimplifications that most bright people abandon in adolescence.

I think the reaon for this is not lack of intelligence - we are talking about perhaps the greatest chess player ever -, but the many psychiatric ailments he suffered, especially a tendency towards paranoia and pathological obsession.

In fact, Fischer shared several similarities with English physics colossus, Isaac Newton: both had abnormally high IQs, that were exceptional even by genius standards, coupled with an amazing photographic memory and a tendency towards severe psychoticism and mild schizofrenia. Medical doctors average an IQ of 125, MIT professors 145 and most historical geniuses would score an IQ around 160. Fischer's IQ was a stratospherical 190,a level of intelligence that less than ten out of every thousand million people have.

The things Fischer said and his rabid anti-Semitism were the result of his personality and not of his intellectual capacity. He also showed an unusual amount of imagination. Consider this statement his made on Philipine radio:

"The Jews are trying to drive elephants to extinction because the trunks of elephants reminds them of uncircumcised penises."

While you don't need to have an absurd IQ of 190 to make such an incredibly stupid comment, it does show his unusal creativity and paranoic personality.

Another thing that made Fischer interesting was that, unlike other chess masters, he was tall, athletic and aggressive. He was a very good tennis player and loved ccompeting for the sake of it. Or in his words:

"I love the moment I crush a man's ego."

He was also not modest in any way:

"The difference between me and dogs like Kasparov is that I am an overral genius who just happens to play chess, whilst he is an idiot savant who knows nothing but chess."

Of course, the reverse was true: Kasparov is a brilliant man who knows a lot of many things, whilst Fischer never knew anything in his life but chess.

Listen to Fischer's rants on radio and you'll see how aggressive he was. He saluted the September eleventh terrorist attack, said the U.S is nothing more than a farce controleld by Jews and that all Jews should be rounded up and executed. Fischer ranting like a madman with his deep voice saying that millions of peoplpe who be executed makes it almost unbelievable that this man was a professional chess player. This ultra-high IQ bully with the personality of a child is fascianting, although loathable in numerous ways.

Giant Attitude said...

Er, isn't Bill Clinton's DNA reading a matter of public record now from the Starr Report?

Gilbert Ratchet said...

Surely there's some DNA left over from the blue GAP dress to run a test?

Anonymous said...

Chelsea is probably not Bill's daughter for that matter. Juanita Broaddrick said Bill told her that he was sterile due to childhood mumps after he allegedly raped her. Take a look at Webster Hubbell and see how much Chelsea looks like him. A friend of the family helping out, I'd think.

Anonymous said...

"Now maybe someone can explain to me how Obama Jr. inherited none of Obama Sr.'s features?"

Sr. was just a cover. Look at Malcolm X's pictures. Jr. and he could be twins.

Anonymous said...

DNA testing shows that the descendants of Alexander Hamilton are not related to their supposed Hamilton cousins in Scotland, lending support to the theory that Hamilton was not really a Hamilton.

Anonymous said...

In fact, Fischer shared several similarities with English physics colossus, Isaac Newton: both had abnormally high IQs, that were exceptional even by genius standards, coupled with an amazing photographic memory and a tendency towards severe psychoticism and mild schizofrenia.

Newton served as Master of the Mint for the final 28 years of his life - for Fischer, the equivalent would have been a 28 year reign as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Anonymous said...

Prince Harry sure looks a lot like James Hewitt.

Anonymous said...

I've seen varying stats as to
what percentage of live births across social strata are sired by
someone other than the mother's husband. The figure of 8% sticks in mind, and I recall the assertion that it is fairly even across social strata.

Anonymous said...

A lot of people believe that the Secret Service required that Starr publish a fake [doctored] DNA sequence for national security purposes.

Mr. Anon said...

"William1066 said...

Now maybe someone can explain to me how Obama Jr. inherited none of Obama Sr.'s features?"

Indeed. The son looks nothing like the putative father.

CJ said...

Nicholas has pictures of the two men, Gerhardt Fischer and Paul Semenyi, for you to compare to the chess legend's looks.

But it's Paul Nemenyi! Considering the subject is paternity, that may be a Freudian typographical slip.

Truth said...

"He was listed as the father on their birth certificates and treated the two children as his own, no differently than the other five."

Now that's an Alpha.

Markku said...

This ultra-high IQ bully with the personality of a child is fascianting, although loathable in numerous ways.

People with personalities like Fischer's must be crushed. It's a real shame starstruck Iceland granted him citizenship for such frivolous reason as him playing there. His ass should've landed in an American prison instead.

Ultra-obnoxious personality and the resultant actions can only be tolerated of geniuses if the fruits of their creation are beneficial enough for mankind. Fischer never created anything of any value in addition to a few good games of chess, a game far inferior to go/weiqi/baduk.

Ivy League Bastard said...

Being athletic is not exceptional for chess masters, nor are height and good looks less common among chess players than others. Fischer was just lucky to have all three.

One of Fischer's rivals, Efim Geller (almost-world champion) was a huge man and a good basketball player. Kasparov is an avid soccer player and always advocated sports as a means of fitness and relaxation for chess players.

Anonymous said...

"He was listed as the father on their birth certificates and treated the two children as his own, no differently than the other five."

Now that's an Alpha."

No, that's beta. So wimpy he hadn't the 'nads to throw the cuckolding wench and her mamzers back to her father and raise his own kids in a morally wholesome household. Epic beta.

hcl said...

I've read that it was later found out Gerhard Fischer too, is Jewish. (Which fits the life history and his non-German, rather Jewish looks.) Don't have link on hand but probably google-able.

hcl said...

I forget to add, Gerhard Fisher's birth name was allegedly not "Fischer", but some weird Jewish name...

albertosaurus said...

I can play this game too. The scholarship standards seem low enough.


Its quite clear that Nemenyi is really Lucky Luciano (check the pictures). This explains a lot. First of all it explains how Bobby got his agressiveness and killer instinct. It also explains why Luciano was the only Italian mobster who fully embraced the Jews (Meyer Lanksky).

Christopher said...

Pretenders to the throne?! Great stuff. The Birthers should be reading up on that stuff for precedent.

Anonymous said...

"(Fisher) said the U.S is nothing more than a farce controleld by Jews"

What a nut! Just because they own the entire media and have bought the congress! The US run by Jews, crazy talk!

Anonymous said...

You people are idiots. Obama doesn't look like his mother either. That's because he's BIRACIAL.

Truth said...

"Epic beta."

No, I would say that making one's own decisions without bowing to societal pressures and putting the welfare of not only one's own children but other children as well over one's own ego says "alpha."

Fred said...

"Newton served as Master of the Mint for the final 28 years of his life"

Right. And during that time he had people hanged for counterfeiting and he devoted his enormous intelligence to biblical exegesis designed to figure out the geography of hell. Maybe he and Fischer had some mental issues in common.

Anonymous said...

markkus said

> People with personalities like Fischer's must be crushed.[...]His ass should've landed in an American prison <

What crime did he commit?

Anonymous said...

No, that's beta. So wimpy he hadn't the 'nads to throw the cuckolding wench and her mamzers back to her father and raise his own kids in a morally wholesome household. Epic beta.

Or maybe he had an IQ above 100 and knew that if he threw his wife out, the state would send his own kids with her--and, boy, what a great home environment they'd have then.

-OM

Anonymous said...

"He was listed as the father on their birth certificates and treated the two children as his own, no differently than the other five."

No, that's beta. So wimpy he hadn't the 'nads to throw the cuckolding wench and her mamzers back to her father and raise his own kids in a morally wholesome household. Epic beta.

Trust me, even without counting Mom's infidelity, this household was about as morally unwholesome as you could get. Name the social dysfunction, they had it in droves. Despite being well into the middle class in economic terms they behaved like something out of a backwoods trailer camp.

Peter

Anonymous said...

Markku

People with personalities like Fischer's must be crushed. It's a real shame starstruck Iceland granted him citizenship for such frivolous reason as him playing there. His ass should've landed in an American prison instead.

Fisher may have been nuts, but it seems more Stalinist than American to "crush" and imprison people for wrong thoughts rather than behaviors.

I don't know much about Fisher and have never heard him, but is there any particular thought or opinion he had that we should construct gulags for?

typical white person said...

"Obama doesn't look like his mother either. That's because he's BIRACIAl."

huh? I think you're mixing it up--it's his father of whom he had dreams of, that he doesn't look like.
Looks like mom. Same eyebrows, eyes, long chin, ovoid face. He look quite a bit like her and his typical white grandfather.

Anonymous said...

Prince Harry sure looks a lot like James Hewitt."

idle speculation and gossip are dangerous things.

I remember seeing Prince Harry and his brother from the the back, when they were outside Buckingham palace looking at the flowers and messages left for their late mother. William resembled his mother, but Harry looked like Charles relatives. Sometimes it's the shape of the head and the fall of the hair. In fact, I think that is one way that identity is verified, in the direction that hair grows.
Harry looked a lot like his great,great uncle -- the never crowned King Edward, Durk of Windsor-- the one who left the throne for Wallis Warfield. Again--the directional flow of the hair, shape of the head (the back of the head especially), very Windsor.

Anonymous said...

http://www.the13th.com/wolfdisguisedasmonk/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/prince_harry_james_hewitt_20050413.jpg

Anonymous said...

"Durk of Windsor"
correction: Duke of Windsor.

Ivy League Bastard said...

re: "In fact, Fischer shared several similarities with English physics colossus, Isaac Newton: both had abnormally high IQs, that were exceptional even by genius standards, coupled with an amazing photographic memory and a tendency towards severe psychoticism and mild schizofrenia."

Newton was opposite to Fischer in most ways. He was quite rational, sane, abstemious, practically and professionally competent, and did not share any of Fischer's dysfunctions. The religious sideline looks ridiculous today but was much less unusual for his time. The alchemy was proto-chemistry, conducted and recorded as such.

Newton went *somewhat* crazy from the mercury poisoning, otherwise he was an extremely unpleasant but by no means irrational man.

I haven't heard of Newton having an exceptional memory. To the contrary, he obsessively wrote everything down on paper, and kept detailed records of all sorts of things.

Justa Dude said...

Steve I worked with the last living nurse who knew Bill Clinton's mom in 1995 at Hope Medical Park Hospital. She added a few more details. George Wright delivered Bill Clinton and Bill's mom told them George was the father and not "the drunk" she put on the birth certificate (presumably Blythe)